Three Point Plan

Brisc’s Three Point Plan to Make New Eden Great Again

POINT ONE: Let’s Make New Eden Fun Again (Ideas to Create More Content)

Changes to local – redesign local to be less about intel

CCP has acknowledged that the local chat channel was never intended to be an intel tool. Combat probes, Dscan – all pale in comparison to the power of local chat in telling you what’s around you in space. The changes to local that resulted in it not functioning properly with the March Release gave a glimpse of what New Eden could be like if local wasn’t fundamentally used for intel, and went back to being just a way to scam noobs and let Horde and TEST amuse each other with ASCII pictures.

For example, while local in highsec, lowsec and NPC nullsec could remain the same, create an ihub upgrade that allows for instant local in nullsec – otherwise local is delayed by a certain period of time. The module could be disrupted by entosising or even attacking the ihub to put it offline temporarily. Systems with no active sov holder would not have instant intel, for instance.

CCP should explore changes to local, including the above ideas, that might limit its usefulness as an intel tool.

Tethering changes to impact more than just supers

CCP has changed the tethering mechanics to require a thirty second delay after using a cyno. This was designed to make it more difficult to move supers across New Eden. That’s a great change, and it will be interesting to see how it plays out over the coming months – whether it actually does make super-scale move ops more dangerous. But for every other capital ship, the changes are less important, because those ships can immediately dock in Fortizars. Given how cheap Fortizars are, they are ubiquitous across null and lowsec.

The tethering mechanic is still very powerful, allowing ships to be invulnerable while in space and while uncloaked. That mechanic should come at a cost – whether to the ship or to the station allowing the tethering. CCP, as part of their tethering change review, look into whether tethering should require a specific ship module fitted, whether the feature can be turned on or off by the station owner, and whether it should cost fuel.

Lift damage cap for low powered structures

The changes made to citadels to help remove low powered structures by skipping one of their timers has definitely helped clear up dead space. To help speed things up more, and because these unattended citadels rarely end up creating content, the damage cap should be lifted, allowing these structures to be more quickly removed with fewer people needed. This change should help both in removing these structures as well as creating the opportunity for more potential capital ship usage and combat

CCP should also explore requiring only one timer for lower power citadels. Given the relatively low cost of citadels, and how often they are treated like disposable assets, too much deference to their defence may not be as necessary as was originally intended.

Remove/limit asset safety – loot drops when citadels are destroyed

One of the reasons why EVE is a great game is that it is merciless when you lose a ship. The ship is destroyed, and the loot fairy determines what modules from the ship and what cargo from the ship drops – whether to be recovered later by the original pilot or his comrades, or taken as spoils of war by the victor.

Except when you blow up a citadel. Asset safety allows you to effortlessly move massive amounts of cargo and goods at zero risk for a fee. That flies in the face of the rest of the game’s mechanics.

CCP should explore removing asset safety, and instead allowing whatever remained inside the citadel when it was destroyed be subject to the whims of the loot fairy and be available for recovery by whoever can get there to salvage first. This would be in line with the rest of the games mechanics, give people a greater reason to fight to defend citadels, and a greater benefit from removing one from a system – especially if it was a trade hub. At the very least, if removing asset safety is a bridge too far, CCP should explore the idea of creating a new structure designed to capture a percentage of asset safety fees to provide a greater payoff for attackers beyond the sov/in-game political aspects.

No bubble proof interceptors with weapons

The interceptor is the only combat ship that is guaranteed to be immune from area of effect warp field disruption. T3 Cruisers require a specific module to gain that capability and they give up much in terms of tank and damage output to get it. Shuttles and yachts are also nullified, but don’t have high slot fittings for weapons.

That’s how it should be. A super-fast, uncatchable combat ship shouldn’t exist in New Eden. “Fozzie Claw” fleets for entosis operations, intel gathering and like take almost all of the risk out of piloting around the galaxy.

CCP should explore limiting the nullification ability on interceptors to restrict its usage when the interceptor is fitted with weapons in its high slots. This would create a greater demand and usage of shuttles, it would remove some of the frustrations of sov warfare, and it would make New Eden a slightly more risky place to live – which is a good thing.

Rethink FAXes

Very large fleet battles with opposing fleets of supercarriers and titans on grid and committed to combat is the definition of end-game content for many players in EVE Online. It’s also one of the rarest of the rare things, so rare that when massive fights are expected, it results in international news stories in gaming (and mainstream) publications.

Those fights rarely result in large casualties for either side (if there are casualties at all, they tend to be very one-sided and usually the result of some kind of backend glitch, like disconnections and desyncs). One of the primary reasons for that is the power of Force Auxiliaries.

FAXes have removed a large amount of the risk from large fleet engagements. A single FAX can nullify the damage output from multiple other ships, regardless of size, and they also create “must kill” targets that protect other, more valuable assets, in battle. That’s, arguably, them working as intended, but that effect is so powerful that it reduces the likelihood of major fleet fights, and limits casualties, which has resulted in a significant proliferation of supercapitals that rarely end up in major fights. I mean, even BRAVE has titans now. BRAVE. Think about it.

CCP should study the impact FAXes have had on major fleet combat and determine if action needs to be taken to curb the disproportionate impact they have on outcomes.

War declaration revisions – get it back to what it was meant to be, not a griefing tool.

One of the most common complaints you’ll see, whether it’s in highsec, lowsec, or nullsec, is the use of the war declaration in a way it was not intended to be used. The war declaration mechanic is woefully outdated, and almost completely used as a griefing tool – not the purpose for which is was intended.

CCP has acknowledged that the war dec system right now is unbalanced. They should explore making changes to the war dec function or explore removing it from the game entirely.

Consider adding additional NPC nullsec space

Providing a stepping-stone for pilots in high sec and low-sec to make the transition to nullsec is important. Given how difficult it is for smaller groups to hold and maintain sovereign systems in the current era of Alliance galactic politics, providing NPC nullsec space for smaller groups to flourish is important. Providence, for example, has become one of the focuses for PvP given the difficulty in ejecting groups from that space. Providing more areas of the game in which sov is less critical, but in which the same benefits of nullsec exist could help maintain the player base as well as ease more players into end game content.

CCP should consider expanding NPC nullsec space.

POINT TWO – Let’s Make New Eden Work For You Again (Ideas for Ships, Items and overall Balance)

More emphasis on balance reviews

CCP has done a considerable amount of balancing of ships over the past year, with changes made to T3Cs, pirate faction battleships, and even some of the most venerable ships in EVE lore. And while FCs will never stop hearing “can I bring my Drake?” there is still more work to do to balance ships out so that there are multiple options for every fleet, and there is no “meta” that everyone conforms to, like the Machariel doctrine that almost every major alliance adopted last year.

CCP should keep that momentum going and continue focusing on balance changes to help create a greater variety of ships and doctrines viable.

Shield equivalent of armor slave set implants

Let’s be fair to our shield super brethren and finally get them the equivalent of a Slave set that enhances their defensive capabilities. Passive tanked shield supers deserve their day in the sun.

Capital MJDs

The day when I see super-heavy snatch fleets become a thing in EVE will be the day I can finally say all my wildest dreams have come true. Even if there’s never a Macro Jump Drive Field module, just giving caps the ability to MJD will be enough for me.

Capital MJDs have been referenced in the lore – the Templar One book included one on an Avatar.

CCP should explore adding a capital MJD, as well as the obvious need for counters and how those would work.

POINT THREE – Let’s Make New Eden Play Better Again (Backend Quality of Life Improvements)

The in-game fitting tool changes have made a huge difference in quality of life for every EVE pilot. But there are still things that third-party applications like Python Fitting Assistant and others do better – such as factoring in skills and implants to things like DPS and EHP.

CCP should explore adding those functionalities to the in-game fitting tool.

Reporting tool – more information provided to reporter

Recognizing that there are obvious reasons (the EULA notwithstanding) for why CCP does not actively provide information on action taken against accounts that are reported for botting or other exploits, there is a firm belief within the community that CCP is not doing enough to deal with the issues of bots, and that the in-game bot reporting tool doesn’t do anything.

CCP should explore providing some kind of feedback to someone reporting a bot about the outcome of their report. An in-game mail saying something to the effect of “CCP has received your report about X. After an investigation, CCP has taken action/not taken action on this report.”

Without going into more detail, that level of transparency would still go a long way into easing community concerns about botting, and assure the community that reports are being reviewed and investigated, rather than simply dumped into a black hole.

One of the most frustrating and time-consuming things for multi-boxers is the constant having to recreate their UI layout on every single account they own and operate. There are work arounds for this now, but they involve altering files within the EVE directories and not everyone is capable of comfortable in doing that. There are also third-party programs that do this, but they aren’t universally available.

CCP should explore making it possible, via the launcher, to duplicate UIs, chat tabs, positioning, and the like so they can be transferred easily between multiple accounts. They should also allow for the saving of multiple screen configurations so that UIs can be changed on the fly by the user – for example, switching between a PVP UI set up and a Mining/Industrial UI set up. This should help remove some of the pain from multi-boxing.

CCP should also explore storing UI settings on both the client and on the server, so switching between machines or clean reinstalls of the game don’t wipe UI data.

For many players, including me, there is zero chance that I will ever use skill extractors in a meaningful way on my main account. Since skill extraction has become one of the key ways compromised accounts are liquidated, it would be a great benefit to the game for players to be able to mark their accounts as non-skill extracting accounts so that hackers who obtain access to the account can’t use extractors to reduce the account to zero skillpoints. This would have to be a permanent decision, obviously.

CCP should explore how difficult it would be to make this change possible.

2 Fun Things

Change the tidi color from green to blue, so when it maxes out we have another reason to complain about the “blue donut.”

Let’s give poor StainGuy his greatest dream, and get a lowsec gate to Stain.